It seems only yesterday I saw him, Easter Day in old Ohio. The significant dawn was struggling with great masses of heaped-up clouds,—the incredulities and fears of the world’s night; but now and again the invincible sun found some tiny rift and poured a flood of tender gold upon a favored spot where stood some solitary tree or expectant sylvan company. Along the river bank all was still. There were no signs of spring, save for the modest springing violet and the pious buckeye, shaking its late-prisoned fronds to the morning air, and tardily setting in order its manifold array of Easter candles. The oak trees were gray and hushed, and the swamp elms held their peace until the fortunes of the morning should be decided. Suddenly from down the river path there came a tiny burst of angel music, the peerless song of the Ruby-crown. Pure, ethereal, without hint of earthly dross or sadness, came those limpid welling notes, the sweetest and the gladdest ever sung—at least by those who have not suffered. It was not indeed the greeting of the earth to the risen Lord, but rather the annunciation of the glorious fact by heaven’s own appointed herald.
The Ruby-crowned Kinglet has something of the nervousness and vivacity of the typical wren. It moves restlessly from twig to twig, flirting its wings with a motion too quick for the eyes to follow, and frequently uttering a titter of alarm, chit-tit or chit-it-it. During migrations the birds swarm thru the tree-tops like Warblers, but are often found singly or in small companies in thickets or open clusters of saplings. In such situations they exhibit more or less curiosity, and if one keeps reasonably still he is almost sure to be inspected from a distance not exceeding four or five feet. It is here too that the males are found singing in spring. The bird often begins sotto voce with two or three high squeaks as tho trying to get the pitch down to the range of mortal ears before he gives his full voice. The core of the song is something like tew, tew, tew, tew, titooreet′, titooreet′, the last phrases being given with a rising inflection, and with an accent of ravishing sweetness. The tones are so pure that they may readily be whistled by the human listener, and a musical contest provoked in which one is glad to come out second best.
Having heard only the preparatory spring song for years, it was a matter of considerable rejoicing to come upon the birds at home in Stevens County. They were especially common in the neighborhood of Newport, and they sang incessantly, and loudly from the depths of the giant larches, which abound there. It appears that the full-fledged breeding song is quite different from the delicate migratory carol. The preliminary notes are of much the same quality, but instead of accenting the final syllable of the titooreet phrase, and repeating this, the phrase is given only once, with a sort of tittering, tremolo effect, and the emphasis is thrown upon a series of strong, sharp terminal notes, four or five in number, and of a uniform character—the whole somewhat as follows: tew tew tew tew titteretteretter reet, cheep′ cheep′ cheep′ cheep′. These emphatic notes are also rendered in a detached form at occasional intervals, usually after the entire song has been rehearsed; and they are so loud at all times as to be heard at a distance of half a mile. One individual began his song with an elaborate preliminary run of high-pitched, whining notes of a fineness almost beyond human cognizance; then effected a descent by a kititew note to the tew tew tew series. In his case, also, the emphatic closing notes had a distinctly double character, as cheépy, cheépy, cheépy.
We ransacked the Newport woods day after day with feverish eagerness, allured and goaded by the music, but filled also with that strange fire of oölogical madness which will lead its possessor to bridge chasms, dangle over precipices, brave the billows of the sea, battle with eagles on the heights, or crawl on hands and knees all over a forty-acre field. The quest was well-nigh hopeless, for the woods were dense and the tamaracks were heavily draped in brown moss, “Spanish beards,” with a thousand possibilities of hidden nests to a single tree. June the First was to be the last day of our stay, and it opened up with a dense fog emanating from the Pend d’Oreille River hard-by. Nevertheless, six o’clock found us ogling thru the mists on the crest of a wooded hill. A Ruby-crown was humming fragmentary snatches of song, and I put the glasses on him. I was watching the flitting sprite with languid interest when Jack exclaimed petulantly, “Now, why won’t that bird visit his nest?” “He did,” I replied, lowering the binoculars. The bird in flitting about had paused but an instant near the end of a small fir branch about thirty-five feet up in a sixty-foot tree, springing from the hillside below. There was nothing in the movement nor in the length of time spent to excite suspicion, but it had served to reveal thru the glasses a thickening of the drooping foliage, clearly noticeable as it lay outlined against the fog.
We returned at ten o’clock and the first strokes of the hand-ax, as the lowermost spike bit into the live wood, sent the female flying from the nest into a neighboring tree. As the ascent was made spike by spike, she uttered a rapid complaint, composed of notes similar to the prefatory notes of the male’s song; but during my entire stay aloft she did not venture back into the nesting tree, nor did the male once put in an appearance. The nest was only five and a half feet out from the tree trunk, and the containing branch an inch in thickness at the base. Hence, it was not a difficult, albeit an anxious, task to support the limb midway with one hand and to sever it with a pocket-knife held in the other, then to haul it in slowly.
The nest was composed largely of the drooping brown moss, so common in this region as to be almost a necessity, yet contrasting strongly with the clean bright green of the young fir tree. But, even so, it was so thoroly concealed by the draping foliage that its presence would have escaped notice from any attainable standpoint, save for the mere density,—a shade thicker than elsewhere. At first sight one is tempted to call it a moss-ball, but close examination shows it to be rather an assemblage of all sorts of soft substances, vegetable downs, cottons from the pussy willows and cottonwood trees, weathered aments, hair, fine grass (in abundance), with occasional strange inclusions, such as spider-egg cases, dried flower-stalks, and the like. The lining is exclusively of feathers, those from the breast of the Robin being most in evidence. A few of these curled up from under the neatly turned brim, so as to partly conceal the contents; but only a little effort was required to obtain a perfect view of the eggs from above.
Taken near Newport. Photo by Dawson and Bowles.
RUBY’S BASKETFUL.
I counted the glowing pile, slowly, calmly, as a miser counts his gold when the bolts are shot—twice to make sure—one, two, three, * * * nine, the last one being thrown in on top of the heap for good measure.
The eggs were marvelously fresh, insomuch that in blowing them Mr. Bowles coaxed seven of the nine yolks out unbroken thru the mere needle-holes in the shell which he counts a sufficient exit. In color they were pure white, flushed with the peculiar ruddy of fresh eggs having semi-transparent shells, with a pale broad band of brownish dust about the larger ends (the smaller one in one case).